How the tools of the digital health revolution can be used to reduce the gaps that exist in the provision of health care between different layers of the population. While at the same time produce institutions that empower public medicine and public medical research in Israel.
Analysis of the participants:
The digital health revolution is a dramatic game-changer in the way medicine is consumed. It can be a top layer of medicine for a little while and it can be a solution for vast populations. The way we shape it is the way it will be consumed.
Patients want to pay as little as possible for good medicine. Eventually demand is rigid so they will also pay very high prices for good medical services.
Doctors and the medical establishment — on the one hand, will be interested in improving the ability to treat patients well and effectively, on the other hand, if this damages the status of medical staff without alternatives or makes doctors less employed, this may lead to the failure of some of the measures. It is also seen at all stages - attempts by doctors to switch industries and become entrepreneurs who get rich quickly from new developments.
The government — is interested in the evacuation of health resources in the short term and will therefore be pressured to transfer responsibility to market forces. Here, in my opinion, an unholy alliance of politicians with a short-term vision can be formed with the private market and the abandonment of the institutions of the future of digital medicine.
Policy alternatives
A significant future medical institution will be added to the hospital and clinics — personal digital health, which includes the use of equipment and the ןinternet. The question of the research is how will it be accessed by the public, whether through the market mechanism or through the public medical institution? And assuming we are interested in having this medical service as public as possible the question is how do you make sure that the platform is open to all and not on a private social network like Google, Facebook and Amazon.
1. Integrating advanced and proven digital systems into the public health system for the benefit of users.
2. Promoting public health R&D funded by a chief scientist within dedicated R&D centers which will benefit from royalties and equity.
3. The introduction of funding for digital health care within the basic health insurance of the country's citizens.
4. Introduction of dedicated grants within existing research institutions for digital health developments.